30 Pieces of Silver
by PUPPYSPANK
Summary: 30 ways Nick and Ellis cope with a decaying state of health and sanity in a world lost to an infectious force. 30 Nick/Ellis themed snapshots.


**30 Pieces of Silver**

**Author: **PUPPYSPANK  
**Character/Pairing/Group: **Left 4 Dead 2 – Nick/Ellis  
**Summary: **30 ways four survivors cope with a decaying state of health and sanity in a world lost to an infectious force. Overall rating for this fic will peak at M, some chapters will be a little lower on the rating scale.  
**Disclaimer: **Wish I was with Valve so that I could own everything. I only own the fiction I write though.  
**A/N:** So it's been a long time since I've written anything. I have a bunch of older fics I'd like to finish, but at the moment I feel ready to take on something new by stealing thirty prompts off an LJ community and writing a chapter for each. Essentially all of the chapters are going to take place over the canon storyline for L4D2 however this quickly going to have a very non-canon Nellis sort of twist.

The number of prompts I stole is 30 and as such this fic will have 30 individual and non-related chapters, however I think the number 30 will become a recurrent theme. See if you can catch all of the thirties at the end I suppose?

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_01__ - Defiant_ - Slight Nick/Ellis - K+_**  
**_

Death had been something that had weighed heavily on their minds since day one. Even in their brightest moments, it was an omen that surrounded them. Moaning in the night, the rank smell of decay in the air and the wounds each of them had sustained over the course of their journey where all constant reminders that at any second one of them could slip and be lost forever. It was never with them more than in was now.

Coach was the first to depart. Whilst straggling through the downpour in a witch infested sugar mill something had gone wrong. A wayward bullet, presumably meant for an infected, had missed and – at such a close range – had taken a sizable chunk out of the leg of Rochelle. Her responding howl of pain and stumbling fall attracted the attention of a sobbing witch who had been resting just below the slippery levels of piping they'd been determined to cross.

He'd died a hero. Valiantly pulling the trigger as fast as he could reload the pump, he put himself in front of the ailing woman, taking the claw of death to the chest; A martyr's sacrifice, as if in atonement for his mistake. Nick and Ellis had made their way down as quickly as possible. A stuffy eyed mechanic at loss for words struggled with shaking fingers to resist the urge to scream at the lifeless body of the man who had acted as an adoptive father for their small little troupe. Nick bandaged a moaning Rochelle as best as he could, but he knew there was little he could do for her now.

"Ellis...Ellis we have to carry her."

And Nick was in pain too. For even as they'd made struggled their way to the safe-house, relishing in their temporary piece of salvation, he knew that death would not leave them, not any time soon anyway. And while Ellis buried his head in his hands, hushed _no no no's_ bouncing off his lips and echoing throughout the room, Nick had to struggle to maintain what little utopia he could. He knew it wasn't much, and he new his efforts where in vain, but he tried.

Rochelle had gone in her sleep not long after. The massive wound in leg was too large, and too great. No amount of medical tape and gauze could hold it together, and all of their supplies where covered in that filthy water anyhow. The wound had become infected and the infection had caused necrosis. Thus she passed.

And then it was down to two.

Just him, a loner gambler in a stained suit, trying to survive on a team of two with a young man he barely even knew. Yet Nick wasn't ready to embrace death. The taste of it was still too fresh on his tongue. The two of them, he decided, were going to make it through this.

"Nick, what do we do?"

And he didn't know, he really didn't know. But Rochelle's body was still there and beginning to rot (_just like the infected, just like their sanity, just like him_), they needed to get that gas to Virgil if they were ever going to make it to New Orleans and their food supplies where running dangerously low. There wasn't any other feasable option.

"We're going out there Ellis. We're going to make back to that boat and we're going fight all of these stupid infected and survive."

Ellis grimaced.

"Nick...I," he hesitated, "We can't. We can't make it. Nick _we're gonna die._"

Nick reached for, and then gripped the mechanics hand.

"No." He meant to say it firmly, but his voice was shaking with fear. "We're going to make it through this. "

Ellis squeezed back.

And despite the taste of blood on his tongue, the ring of death in his heart, and the distant growl of something too big for the two of them to right - the warmth from that hand was enough to steady his mind enough to raise his gun and fight.

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**A/N:** "30 pieces of silver" comes from Matthew 26:15 in which Judas betrays Jesus for aforementioned 30 pieces of Silver. I thought it'd made a good title seeing as CEDA, for all intents and purposes, has betrayed the people and allowed the infection to run amok. I don't really have an explanation for the chapter title though. Hah. Reviews and whatnot are appreciated!


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